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On the Times and My Contemporaries
In the final analysis, parity was not only achieved, but according to some indicators,
we passed the United States in terms of nuclear missile armaments. In any
case, the threat of a third world war was removed.The two superpowers began to
understand that bad peace was better than mutual annihilation. But the initial
economic positions at the start of the Moon race were considerably stronger for
the Americans.
In the early 1970s, we won the nuclear missile race, but lost the moon race.
Statesmen did not support the designers’ proposals to hold on to what had been
begun on the lunar program, modify the N-1 launch vehicle, and gain prestigious
“revenge” by creating a permanent lunar base by the end of the 1970s. It really
would have been possible to achieve this. But every cloud has a silver lining.The
successful landing of Americans on the Moon prompted the rapid acceptance of
the program for creating a series of Salyut long-duration orbital stations, which
served as the scientific-technical basis for the Mir orbital complex.The Mir station,
in turn, initiated the beginning of American operations to construct an even larger
orbital station.
American officials in charge of NASA were convinced that using Soviet-
Russian intellect and the experience gained on Mir, it would be possible to reduce
both the costs of the station and the time required for the program’s implementation.Thus,
the International Space Station (ISS) appeared, the total cost of which,
according to predictions, would be significantly higher than the American expenditures
on all seven lunar expeditions. 29
An outstanding achievement of Soviet rocket-space technology was the
creation of the Energiya-Buran reusable space system.This time, the initiative for
the creation of the system, which is similar in performance to the American Space
Shuttle system, originated not from scientists and designers, but from the top, from
the State, which for prestige and for political purposes, and also out of fear of an
American advantage in a new space system for delivering sudden strikes, spared no
resources on this exceptionally complex program.
The Energiya-Buran system was the largest-scale program in the history of
domestic cosmonautics. More than 1,200 enterprises and organizations and
almost 100 ministries and departments participated in its creation. As a result,
using mobilization economics methods, the Soviet state produced the Energiya
launch vehicle, which in terms of its capabilities had no rivals in the world, since
the Americans had halted work on the Saturn V superheavy launch vehicle after
the lunar expeditions. The Energiya superheavy launch vehicle offered cosmonautics
the broadest of possibilities.The Buran space carrier vehicle in its single
unmanned flight also demonstrated advantages over the American Space Shuttle.
The success of the Energiya-Buran program was made possible by the fact that
expenditures on the “nuclear missile shield” were substantially reduced after
29. There were seven attempted Apollo lunar landings. One of them, Apollo 13, did not reach the surface.
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